30 March 2014

Rejecting Mine // Thoughts on Raising Community Minded Children

// My burgeoning toddler has firmly entered the 'no' stage. Her 'no's' have become much more passionate and assertive in the last month or so. Along with this comes 'me' and 'mine'. Selfishness has begun to rear its ugly head.I tell myself she is learning. That she is in a foundational period of development. Learning possession is normal and even healthy.// While Hazel is learning to share and socialize. I am also learning. Im learning how to parent her. Im learning which behaviours I need to correct, and learning how to correct them. My desire is to correct them with love and grace. I want her to learn the beauty of self-sacrifice. I want her to want to give and to share.But if I'm being honest friends. Selfishness rears its head in my own life far too often. This is our nature. I find myself wanting my own time. Coveting naptime maybe just a little too much. Wanting my husbands undivided attention. Staying in my own comfortable bubble and not seeing the needs of those outside of my family. // This is the joy and trial of motherhood. We must learn to deny our own self-seeking nature. We truly are not own own anymore. Perhaps more now than even in marriage. We give ourselves completely to these little beings daily; physically, emotionally and spiritually. My desire is to raise Hazel | and all of our children | to know that giving really is better than receiving, that to deny yourself is our highest calling. But she will never deeply know this if I am not first modelling it in my own life. If she sees me choose sacrifice over self, community over cut off, time and again; she will know. She will learn to choose rightly, to love others. // This will not come easily; it will not come lightly. I will fail as I walk this journey. Its a daily denial, a daily fire to walk through to becoming refined. Im thankful for grace. And im thankful for another day to begin again.

>> This is the first installment of "Thoughts on Raising Community Minded Children". I hope you'll come on back for part two, coming soon!

4 comments:

Such a hard thing to teach (and sometimes to model) for our kiddos. But I know they catch on--my four-year-old girl gives me lots of hope in this area. The boys on the other hand, not so much:) Look forward to the next post!

Love the new look :) This is a hard one, like you said a daily battle but a battle worth fighting!!! So many kids don't see the bigger picture, how their actions affect others. When I was teaching we made a conscious effort teaching about community, some of them understood instantly and changed their ways.